Ad blocking users like endorphins.
They’re a fairly fit bunch, with more than 70% reporting engaging in physical activity 2-3 times a week and 81% reporting weekly sweat sessions.
But although they’re committed to raising their heart rates, ad blocking users can’t be classified as gym rats. Their favorite regimes don’t take place within the confines of a traditional fitness center. Rather than opting for the elliptical or treadmill, ad blocking users prefer running or jogging. They’re also fans of non-gym exercise, a category that encompasses everything from Frisbee golf to parkour.
Since this demographic spends its exercise time in the park or nature preserve rather than inside Planet Fitness, we decided to look into what makes outdoor exertion unique.
Here are five key ways the decision to jog around the block or through the local park can impact your life.
- It boosts your mood. According to a study from Nature, time spent in outdoor spaces—especially green ones—can greatly reduce the prevalence of depression.
- It helps you exceed goals. Working out in the great outdoors can help you overcome fitness plateaus and achieve greater results in a shorter amount of time. One study states that if you take your workout into the fresh air, you’re likely to add 30 minutes or more of exercise time per week.
- It enhances memory. Psychologists at the University of Michigan have found that time spent outside—rather than, say, riding on a stationary bike watching a simulation of moving through a wooded landscape—is linked to improved memory function and attention.
- It can bolster well-being. The BBC reports that just five minutes spent in the “green spaces” where outdoor sports usually take place can have a massive, positive impact on self-esteem, mental-health, and feelings of contentment.
- It’s anti-carcinogenic. Exposure to trees can work to combat cancer, due to the fact that inhaling forest air means inhaling phytoncides. As the Department of Conservation explains:
In today’s overworked, sedentary, and car-reliant world, a commitment to physical fitness is a statement. And that statement is compounded when the physical fitness in question is taking place outside.
We can’t say for sure what prompts ad blocking users to leave the studio for the park and the gym for the nature trail…but we can say with confidence that that decision leads to greater health and well-being.
To say that the team at AAX is interested in ad blocking users is an understatement. We’re fascinated.
So we decided to consult the mass trove of data that GlobalWebIndex (GWI) keeps about internet behavior in order to tease out some of the particularities of the group. We took our findings and compiled “10 Things You Didn’t Know About Ad Blocking Users,” a study that peers into everything from what kinds of exercise they enjoy (which is what you just read about) to preferences for digital content purchasing and love of motorsports.
The study will be published on January 16, 2020.
- Thought leadership
